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Top 10 Least Favorite Videos (Part 1)
I've said this before, but my 5 year anniversary on YouTube is coming up in February, which is... just strange to think that I've been doing this for half a decade. In all of this time, I've had a lot of ups and downs and I thought that I'd... count them up. Why am I doing this now, like six months early? Well, because I've got... a lot on my plate where I know that the projects that I've got planned are going to last me well into that February. Also, I'm very impatient. But that means you get the fun about six months early - I'm gonna be making a list of my Top 10 Favorite and Least Favorite videos... and because fair is fair and I like to do the negative lists first, we're doing my top 10 least favorite videos that I've made. I want to say "worst" but I think that my opinion is a little bit biased on this one. Like everyone, I make mistakes. Not everything that I do is phenomenal, obviously. I've had times of burnout, intense stress, and unprofessionalism and that's affected my work. But it's only by addressing our previous faults that we can learn from them and move on and become better. That being said, I am going to put some caveats on this one to make the list... more interesting. Number 1, I'm only going with the main animated atrocities or admirable animations. I've made a lot of weird other videos that can be described as shitposts and I can't really keep track of them all. This is what most people know me for, so I don't think that anyone is going to be too angry. Number 2, Any video that I've deleted is disqualified for the list. So no Pet Sitter Pat, Stuck in the Wringer, One Coarse Meal, etc. I'm not including them because it's obvious that I don't like them and honestly I don't want to reiterate. Of course, videos deleted for copyright reasons and not by me personally are still game. And third, I'm granting mercy for time. We're including outliers of where I should have been at the time. Otherwise my earliest videos would take up most of the list. Which is why this isn't a "worst" list. Like so far I think my worst video released in 2017 is better than my best video in 2013. So, keep that in mind as I go through my past. Also, for reference, at present my latest video is Animated Atrocities #142: Cartoon Network in 2017 and my latest Admirable Animation is #54: The Works of Winsor McCay. Without further procrastination or stalling, let's go. Number 10: Spit Collector - Cramp Twins Atrocities #67 I conducted this whole review in rhyme. It didn't work. Why did I conduct the whole thing in rhyme? Because at this point in time, I had reviewed so many grossout shows, or at least that's what I felt like. Mega Babies, Adult Party Cartoon, The Splinter, Breadwinners, Sanjay and Craig, Flapjack,'' Allen Gregory. Even back then, I knew that I needed to do something different to keep things interesting. The only problem is that what I did to keep things interesting... didn't work. There's no way to argue it really. However, I can only be so angry at myself for trying something new, which is why it only gets number ten on the list. '''Number 9: The Goode Family Pilot Atrocities #119' First of all, the audio in this review is shit. I don't know why it's shit. Maybe it was some kind of technical error, but that's probably something that I should have caught onto. Considering that this review was made in the deep summer, it may have been a fan or something like that. Secondly... this review should have been a lot more detailed about the issues in question. I think that I did much better explaining myself in the second part, but when doing a review like this, I can't really tap-dance about the tangential topics. I shouldn't exactly go as far as I did in Test of the Tested (which isn't making this list, by the way), but... the I should have been more clear that I didn't like this show and this episode because it felt very clearly like an assault on a political position without any further thought, which has become more and more of a problem. I don't know how many people might agree with me putting this one on the list, but it's a clearest feeling of "I should have done better." I don't know why I didn't go further, as I clearly had no issues doing so in things like Screams of Silence or Homer Badman. And obviously I did so later, but it should have been a lot more... integrated into the actual review. This is one of the few reviews where I think it doesn't even come across as clear as exactly why I don't like this show. Number 8: Nobody Doesn't Like TJ Atrocities #70 Considering how many people get confused by what I tried to say in this episode, I'm pretty sure that the execution here was botched. My main problem was the moral, or at least, how it came across. And that might be the first problem with the episode - it probably wasn't enough to establish a whole review around. The episode was trying to give a "you can't make everyone like you" moral, when in the end it came across as "it's okay to dislike people for no reason at all." And I guess that I didn't explain why this was... a problem in the review, because plenty of people ended up wondering... what my problem with that is. To put it simply, it's okay to dislike people... if you have a reason for it. Like, a legit reason. It's only human. And as long as you don't go around hurting those you don't like, it's not the worst thing in the world. it's not the best, but you can only ask for so much. In the episode, Gordy is just given this irrational hatred of TJ. Sure, TJ gives Gordy reason to hate TJ throughout the episode, but there's no baseline at all. It feels irrational, and that confuses the moral... a lot. And that's largely what this episode is riding on. It's not particularly funny. The story isn't anything special. And Recess has been known to do this before, in episodes like Dance Lessons. I really should have been able to elaborate better on this. Maybe for funsies, I'll do a review of the Weekenders version of this episode because... it's the exact same plot. And it fails in the exact same way. 90's cartoons did that a lot. Everyone would make their moral-driven episode in the exact same way, so when one failed... all of them failed. Like... you should always attend school because they might be having a carnival on the day that you decide to play hookie ' Number 7: Elf Bowling: The Movie Atrocities #77' Sometimes it's all about tone, and sometimes you can get your tone just so... wrong that it gets tiring. It gets tiring fast. One of the most... let's call it debated... aspects of my reviews is... well, the anger. Sometimes it works, I think, like it apparently did in Chicken Little. But sometimes... it goes too far. There's a reason that what happened in the Problem Solverz review happened in the very next review, because even at this point, I had realized that it was going too far. And sometimes you've got to cross the line to really know where the line is (and this review leading to that realization is why it's only number 8) Keep in mind that a lot of my earlier works have been an active exercise in finding myself, and some of that's figuring out... for lack of a better set of words "what I can get away with." A lot of my line of logic back then was "other internet reviewers get super angry... so it's okay if I do." Among other things. "This movie is so bad that no one could like it, therefore I can say anything I want against it." It's stupid in hindsight, but you've got to be stupid before you can become wise. But it did help me start to analyze why something does work for others, but doesn't work for me. Because, let's not beat around the bush - there are plenty of internet reviewers who get loud, abrasive, and angry. And there is an audience for that. Why doesn't it work for me? Well, for one, my voice is stuck on sincere. Like, I probably couldn't fail a polygraph test if I tried. When I say something... it sounds like I really mean it. It's very hard for my voice to sound like I can't. On top of that, unlike most other people who do the "loud and rowdy shtick" I don't really focus on the humor. Whether I've been good or bad at it, deconstructing the work and critiquing it has always been my focus, and the two don't gel well together. Besides, I guess I'm kind of better at the more... deadpan sarcastic humor. I've had angry reviews since then - Seth McFarlane's Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy, Drawn Together: The Movie, Screams of Silence. In some occasions, but none got quite as loud and obnoxious as it was here. This review is lower on the list because if you can tolerate the... tone... the review is otherwise fine. It doesn't have gaps in logic for instance, I think I make decent points around the problems of the movie, and I do make some good quips occasionally. I could go on detailing the reasons that I slipped up afterwards on the anger, but I'd like to keep focus here. And sometimes it's obvious, like with Screams of Silence. Number 6: There's No Business Like Monkey Business Atrocities #95 I don't know if I need to say anything here that I didn't say in my Going Bananas review. But maybe it's a different perspective here on DeviantArt where the thing that happened that sparked this review and the way that it turned out. This review came out of the three things that make a bad review: burnout, little material, and a moment of great stress. I don't think I need to explain burnout much. Most people know what that is. This was episode 95. And that's not even including the admirable animations, which was around 40. I mean, it wasn't like a backbreaking job or anything, but it does wear you down, and going through burnout and what it creates, I've noticed that even some of the biggest, most successful people on the platform do get burnout eventually. I got out of burnout, oddly enough, by turning this into a job. It was definitely somewhere in the 90's of Animated Atrocities where I decided to swallow my pride and start getting paid for what I was doing. I don't want to say that "I do this for the money" but I will be honest that the fact that I get paid has gotten me through some of the harder times. Considering that I've occasionally had to work through cystic pain, it's obvious that I'm not doing it "for my health." When I do this "for my health" and getting stress out, you get reviews like Elf Bowling or like this one, to be honest. Many people have noticed that after the 90's my videos massively improved, and for awhile that didn't have anything to do with budget. As for "little material" I think I've explained this in both the second Rocket Monkeys review, and in the Spit Collector entry. I still stand by that Rocket Monkeys has nothing new to talk about. It's like one of the most cliche bad cartoons of all time. And I do have to say... things like this tend to be the biggest requests. Things that are bad in very generic ways. I think the logic goes that "because I've done something similar in the past, it's right up my alley." When that's the opposite of the truth. The best reviews I can make are bad in ways that are completely different than anything I've covered in the past. And finally, the moment of intense stress. What happened is that like 50 people all commented at once, or within the same hour for me to review this show. Keep in mind that this was before I got spammed/flooded every other day, and I didn't really know how to react. And it put me into a position where I couldn't win. If I said no, I didn't know what would happen, but if I said yes, there was no material for me to really cover. Not to mention that, at the time, I didn't really want to do anything at that time. it was just a bad set of circumstances to be honest. (Continued next time, with some honorable mentions of the reviews that people might find conspicuous in their absence). Category:Top Tens